Tuesday, June 30, 2015

From The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948 - 1985, by James Baldwin

TIME

"Well. Time passes and passes. It passes backward and it passes forward and it carries you along, and no one in the whole wide world knows more about time than this: it is carrying you through an element you do not understand into an elem. you will not remember."

"With what strange serenity, mingled with terrors, had that man considered the universal nothingness! He had plunged into it headlong, perhaps to render death, the answer that faced one at every inquiry, more supportable."

Saturday, June 27, 2015

From Swift: the Man, His Works, and the Age, Volume II: Dr. Swift, by Irvin Ehrenpreis

JUNTO

"What they wanted was an unambiguous assertion that they were right and their enemies all wrong. What they got was a statement of general laws according to which they might be on the right side in this case but would very likely be wrong in the next."

Friday, June 26, 2015

I'll be fifty-two come July, and in my lifetime who I am has been a
secret, a shame, and a crime. It has also been a joy and a blessing.
Better than thirty years ago, I fell in love with a dark, handsome man.
We've been together ever since and in that time we have, together, been
a secret, a shame, a crime, a joy and a blessing. Together, we have
witnessed the world change, and we have done our small part to change
it. We have changed and have been changed by being together. No secret
now, no shame. We ceased to be criminals just in 2003. Just today we
were acknowledged to be equal before the law by a majority decision of
the United States Supreme Court and the President of the United States.

It is a GOOD day.

To
all who came up with us, to all who came before and to all who fell
along the way, thank you. To all those still working, still marching,
still fighting and dying, take heart and thank you too. To any who may
feel otherwise than glad today, you may take your own time, but not
mine. Today is a GOOD day, and I have no time for anything but joy, and
pride, and the renewal of hope. Today, it is good to be a citizen of
the United States of America.

When on my bosom thy bright eyes,
Florinda, dart their heavenly beams,
I feel not the least love surprise,
Yet endless tears flow down in streams;
There's nought so beautiful in thee,
But you may find the same in me.

The lilies of thy skin compare;
In me you see them full as white:
The roses of your cheeks, I dare
Affirm, can't glow to more delight.
Then, since I show as fine a face,
Can you refuse a soft embrace?

Ah! lovely nymph, thou'rt in thy prime!
And so am I, while thou art here;
But soon will come the fatal time,
When all we see shall disappear.
'Tis mine to make a just reflection,
And yours to follow my direction.

Then catch admirers while you may;
Treat not your lovers with disdain;
For time with beauty flies away,
And there is no return again.
To you the sad account I bring,
Life's autumn has no second spring.

Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach.
Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own.
The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door
Had par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs,
Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep;
Till drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep."
Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.

"Never wear socks when you wait at meals, on account of your own health as well as them who sit at table; because as most ladies like the smell of young men's toes, so it is a sovereign remedy against the vapours."

From Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, Volume 1: Mr. Swift and his Contemporaries, by Irvin Ehrenpreis

EARLY

"Swift's knowing how to read at an early age need not imply that he was unduly precocious. The achievement was apparently a goal not infrequently set by eager parents or guardians. Aubrey reports that Katherine Phillips 'had read the Bible thorough before she was full four years old'."